The present invention relates to teleconferencing or meetings between individuals at remote locations, and more particularly to allowing access to presentation materials for a meeting.
Often times when a meeting or conference call is being organized, the meeting chair or organizer may have a selected invitee or participant list or multiple different invitee or participant lists. This list or lists may also constitute a distribution list or lists for presentation materials that may be available before or at the time of the meeting. There may also be different sets of materials for different distributions lists of meeting participants or invitees. Additional, supplemental or revised materials may also only be available at the time of the meeting. Depending upon the type of conference call, some participants may receive meeting information from a different source than the original meeting chair or organizer. For example, someone from the original invitee or participant list may forward the meeting invitation to one of their colleagues or members of the same team or organization, or the meeting invitation may be forwarded to a particular group of individuals who are not on the original list. This situation may result in potential issues and effective participation in the meeting or conference call because not all of the meeting participants joining the conference call will have access to or know where to go on a network or other arrangement to acquire any presentation materials or other information. Further, different sets of materials may be designated or authorized for delivery or access by certain groups of participants or invitees. The presentation materials or information for accessing the presentation materials may only be sent to the original invitees or participants or only these individuals may be provided authorization to access the materials. The “extended” or additional participants not on the original list may then need to interrupt the conference call to determine how they can access or acquire the presentation materials. There may also be participants that join the meeting or call late and do not know how to access the materials at the time of the call which may result in interruptions of the meeting. There may also be times when it is desirable to determine who is participating on the call, for example if the participant joins late, he may not know who else is on the call if introductions were made at the beginning. There may also be a need to know which invitees are not present on the teleconference.